The Dawn Country(35)

The difference was, he didn’t mind. For him, the madness was a kind of sanctuary, a sacred cocoon spun in the dark emptiness of his heart. Properly guarded, the madness became rock-solid armor. It kept out pain. It protected him from the reflection he saw in people’s eyes.

It allowed him to simply go on.

His sandal slipped on a patch of hidden ice, and his feet went out from under him. He fell hard, landing with the boy’s stone-cold body still clutched to his chest. The wind had been knocked out of him. For a time, he just lay gasping, staring up at the moonlit Cloud People who blew across the heavens with their bellies gleaming.

When he could, he sat up and gently laid the boy aside so that he could struggle to his feet. His legs shook. He spread them to brace himself.

The fragrances of the river smelled powerful here. The earthiness of waterlogged wood mixed pungently with the tang of frozen plants and moss.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he reached down and twined his hand in the boy’s bloody shirt. “I can’t carry you any longer.”

He dragged the boy across a frozen rivulet and up a low rise … and stopped. Ahead of him, a dark shape moved through the moonlight.

The other boy. As he walked along the bank, the child wept inconsolably.

Even from this distance, Sonon could smell the child’s fear-sweat. He forced his trembling legs to move faster. The dead boy’s body thudded over rocks and sticks and finally caught on an upthrust root. Sonon had to jerk hard to dislodge it. By the time he’d freed the corpse, the younger boy had disappeared among the shadows.

Sonon straightened. For a few brief instants, he did not hear the river or the wind sighing through the willows. The sanctuary in his heart had transformed into a vast realm of dust and darkness. For more than twenty summers, he’d been trying to save them, to make sure their families found them so they wouldn’t have to face the torments that he …

The torments that every lost soul endured.

He looked down at the dead boy. Long black hair covered his face. Sonon knelt and tenderly brushed it away; then he slipped his arms beneath the boy and staggered to his feet.

As he carried him down the shore, he murmured, “When you see me at the bridge, remember that tonight one person cared.”





Fifteen

Sindak spread his feet and yawned. He stood half-hidden behind a spruce trunk near where they’d made camp on the western bank of the Quill River. The sound of rushing water filled the darkness.

To the north, above the smoldering ruins of Bog Willow Village, stringers of smoke stretched like the fingers of doom. Every now and then the sky gleamed suddenly orange and Sindak knew flames had burst to life again. Had it only been a few hands of time ago that he’d been sneaking around the huge warriors’ camp, trying to find the stolen children? It seemed like days. At dawn, when they could see, he assumed they would trot north along the river to try to pick up Gannajero’s trail.

And probably find nothing.

“Will find nothing,” he hissed, barely audible.

By the time they arrived, the camp would have broken up and the warriors would have trotted off toward home. Hundreds of feet would have trampled the ground, leaving thousands of tracks and trails shooting off in every direction. Many of the departing warriors would have been pushing captive Dawnland children before them, so finding a child’s track would be of little help. In fact, picking out Gannajero’s trail in the chaos would take a miracle.

Sindak turned to stare at the small clearing thirty paces away where four adults and four children lay rolled in blankets. The fire had burned down to a bed of glowing coals. Gonda and Koracoo lay to the north of the children, Wakdanek and Cord to the south. Everyone appeared to be asleep. Though Sindak found it hard to believe that either Cord or Wakdanek could sleep in close proximity to the other, apparently both were beyond caring about debts of honor.

He swung his war club up and propped it on his shoulder. Across the clearing in the copse of white cedars a faintly blacker splotch marked the place Towa stood.

Sindak wondered what they’d do if they failed to find Gannajero’s trail. Atotarho was not known for being gentle and kind. In fact, his enemies accused him of being the most powerful sorcerer in the land. They said he had an army of hanehwa that hunted down his enemies. When he’d been a boy, Sindak’s mother had seen a skin-being in the forest just outside of Atotarho Village; it had been human-shaped, translucent and shiny, floating through the trees as though sculpted of mist.

Movement caught Sindak’s attention. No more than twenty paces away, through the weave of thick bayberry trunks, eyes flashed. A wolf. A real one.